


Monochrome Nature Morte Photography

by lunicole



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, No Smut, Roommates, Sex Work, Slice of Life, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24191773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunicole/pseuds/lunicole
Summary: It’s in those kinds of moments that it dawns upon him that he’s already in the second half of his twenties and that he still doesn’t have a real career or a mortgage or anything like a long term relationship. It’s not that he hates his job, it sucks, it’s a job, capitalism and everything, but he knows he won’t be able to keep it up for too long.
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun & Oh Sehun
Kudos: 1





	Monochrome Nature Morte Photography

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote myself a quarter life ennui slice of life escort BBH AU with no smut because of the Delight previews.

“Post Malone kind of looks like a scribbled over high school desk, doesn’t he?”

Baekhyun raises an eyebrow, spits out his toothpaste in the sink, trying to quiet the pounding headache under his forehead. He went a bit hard last night, and he feels like he got machine washed and tumble dried at the same time, cotton mouth and bad morning breath. 

It’s in those kinds of moments that it dawns upon him that he’s already in the second half of his twenties and that he still doesn’t have a real career or a mortgage or anything like a long term relationship. It’s not that he hates his job, it sucks, it’s a job, capitalism and everything, but he knows he won’t be able to keep it up for too long.

“Yeah, I guess,” he tells his roomate with a bored look on his features. “Did you just figure that one out?”

Sehun does this shrugging thing he does when he’s checking over his phone, takes it to show the tweet he just saw to Baekhyun. The small letters are hard to read, especially since Sehun is the kind of asshole who lets his smartphone on the lowest screen light setting.

Baekhyun chuckles, then winces. Fuck his head hurts. Sehun catches it, and he chuckles a little bit. That fucker.

“Rough night, old man?” he teases, like he’s a decade younger than Baekhyun, which he’s not.

“Shut up,” Baekhyun growls, goes back to gurgling water.

It’s a slow Sunday they have, Sehun clad in an expensive night shirt he got sent from his Amazon wishlist by one of his viewers, scrolling through his feed, sipping diet soda. He does this crinkly nose thing and whines when Baekhyun lights a cigarette, but Baekhyun doesn’t care, sitting himself on the open window ledge, feet dangling over the alleyway behind.

They’ve got a fourth floor apartment, one of these rundown pieces of work that are freezing cold in the winter, and scorching hot in the summer. They’re lucky it’s only spring right now. There’s even some birds singing, ashes flicking in the wind as Baekhyun feels himself slowly fitting back into his own body.

He needs to call his mom at some point, he figures, tell her he’s alright, maybe lie a little bit, too, but that’s family, he figures. Last time he visited for the holidays, she’d done that immigrant thing of packing a ridiculous amount of frozen stew and force him to bring it home while complaining about how skinny he was. Sehun and himself had had a taste test comparison with cheap soju, ending up spilling secrets to each other like drunken teenagers.

Holy shit he’s already twenty-eight. How did this ever happen?

Baekhyun leans against the window frame, and it’s the exhaustion that sets in, now, as he sighs, closes his eyes.

“You’re going to kill yourself at this rate. The cigarette and the home parkour thing.”

Sehun’s not even lifted his eyes from his phone when Baekhyun shuts the window with a snap.

“Live fast, die young. Bad girls do it well.”

He sprawls himself over Sehun as a demonstration, which only earn Sehun a groan, making a point to ignore him and keep his eyes on his phone as Baekhyun snuggles him like an attention starved house cat.

It’s fitting, how they fit together like this. It’s easy, too, because there are no awkward questions about what they are and what this means. It’s simple. They’ve slept together a few times, but it’s a chill, no strings attached, no awkward mess of feelings and those throat gripping things like jealousy to come between them. Sehun’s an interesting character like that, and that’s why he’s good at doing cam shows and ignoring whatever nasty shit he gets sometimes for overly zealous commenters. It’s a different game, he’d explained to Baekhyun once, matter-of-factly, before getting back to his part-time business school homework.

What they have is intimacy without love, in a way. It’s simpler than whatever was going on back when Baekhyun was young and stupid and dated artsy boys with a possessive streak that couldn’t handle the fact that he did what he did.

The headache quieted down a little. There’s the sound of Sehun’s fingers pressing over the phone screen as he types some comment on a Youtube video, probably. Time stills a little, slows down the way Sundays alway slow down.

Baekhyun’s twenty-eight and he still sleeps with men for money, some of them gross white men with an Asian fetish, some of them just interesting cases of modern loneliness. He still doesn’t know what he’s meant to do with these years that are still ahead of him, still has bad habits and bad reflexes from those harder party years that came with being a fresh new smalltown boy to the big city, wanting to shine brighter than anyone else to make up for the years spent trying to be someone he wasn’t. It’s okay, he tells himself, feeling Sehun’s hand mess with his hair, leaning into the touch unconsciously.

Sometimes Baekhyun gets jealous of Sehun, of the very down-to-earth manner he has of going about his life, of the quiet certainties he has, too, when it comes to the money he makes and the learned prayers Baekhyun just knows he recites in his head out of habit when he sits still for a few moment before his evening meal. It’s the dissonances Sehun seems to simply shrug away, the way he seems to have too much will not to have a future the way Baekhyun often feels he lacks.

It’s alright. There’s still more slow morning like this, cheap cigarettes and bad decisions to take, long car rides in the middle of nowhere, playing the guitar on the couch bathed in the afternoon light.


End file.
